PRELIMINARY IDEAS DRAFT 1

Xie Han Keong 14S70 Section A: The Bone Of Contention

The youths in Singapore today have become socially apathetic. Social Issues Unaddressed Foreseen Circumstances Increasingly Unsympathetic Community Incompetent Future Governments Fragmentation of Society

The Internet is an extremely prevalent necessity to us today, and indeed Social Media has an extensive and far-reaching influence on youths, especially in the social aspect: 1. Though youths can acquire an increased awareness of current social affairs through articles shared on websites like Facebook, social media comprises of entertainment content which is more appealing and causes users to diverge easily. 2. Social media is very broad and generic, and may even preoccupy youths so much that they become uninterested in / have no time for reading current social affairs online. Question: How do we exploit social media to increase the awareness of social issues among youths, and at the same time lessen the aforementioned disadvantages?

Section B: The Shortcomings of Social Media

1) ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT

Figure 1: A YouTube playlist showcasing popular content viewed by Singaporeans- largely entertainment-based

Figure 2: A Facebook game being advertised on a typical Facebook wall feed

Figure 3: Pie-chart comparing the time spent on the various areas of content among most Facebook users

Figure 3 demonstrates how for most people, at least 55% of the time spent on Facebook is for entertainment. Social media websites have a wide array of entertainment content which many youths enjoy perusing- leading to the neglect of important subjects like social issues. 2) BROADNESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Figure 4: According to Figure 4, Singaporeans spend on average 2.2 hours per day on social media websites

Figure 5: Most youths read content on social media- but what content do they actually read? Refer to Figure 3.

Figures 4 and 5 show how a youth can do so many things on social media- which ultimately leads to more time spent online. Sometimes, they may even become addicted to surfing social media websites, resulting in little time to become engaged with social issues online.

Section C: The Proposal

I propose to create a new social networking website that is centred on increasing the awareness of the social state of affairs amongst youths in Singapore, on sensitive topics such as race, religion, and issues such as the ageing population. It should be regulated by moderators from the Ministry-of-Communications-and-Information (MCI). Active and meaningful contributors will be appointed as student moderators. The website will adopt a user-friendly template and a clean theme to create a pleasant user experience. Users must create an account containing their basic profile. There will be points which will translate to a ranking system(reflected under user profile) o Irrelevant/insensitive remarks would be discouraged when users thumb down posts, leading to a loss of points. o If a user posts outrageously the user will be censored or banned. o Conversely, points are gained when other users thumb up a post. o A higher rank would confer greater credibility to a persons posts. There could also be a private chat function to allow the most sensitive topics to be discussed personally.

Through this platform, the influence of social media is expanded to increase the awareness of the social issues amongst youths. Also, it will help to diminish the disadvantages of contemporary social media platforms: (1) by helping to prevent youths from digressing into entertainment content while being engaged in social issues online; (2) by providing a single platform with a specific function so the users time will not be diluted amongst other things to do; (3) by allowing many different youths to express their opinions on social issues with the same leverage as everyone else, encouraging many perspectives to be considered. As a further measure, this platform can be reproduced and adapted to function for the working adult and growing elderly population. This will create a repository of the many perspectives of different age groups of the public which can be studied in the future to create better governing policies.

Section D: Bibliography
1

Amy Porterfield, Study Highlights Growing Social Media Addiction: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/study-highlights-growing-social-media-addiction/ 2 We Are Social, 2014 Asia Pacific Digital Overview: http://wearesocial.sg/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobileapac-2014/ 3 Fann Sim, S'pore youths spending more time online: study: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s-pore-youths-spendingmore-time-online--study-100333925.html